A great many of vegetables and fruits, which seem to us to be almost indispensable articles of subsistence, have been cultivated only a short time. Thus the English have been acquainted with artichokes, asparagus, several kinds of beans, salad, etc. only since 1660.[229-9] Even in France, the finer kinds of fruits have appeared on the tables of the middle class only since the beginning of the last century. The per capita consumption of wool in England, about a generation ago, amounted to about 4 lbs. a year; in Prussia to 1.67; of cloth, to 5.76 and 2.17 ells; of leather, to 3.03 and 2.22 lbs. respectively.[229-10] Of silk goods, England consumes half as much as the rest of all Europe, and an Englishman from 5 to 6 times as much as a Frenchman, although England does not produce a single pound of raw silk.[229-11] [Footnote 229-1: Thus, for instance, the modern enjoyments of coffee, tea, newspapers, tobacco etc., promote domesticity with which antiquity was so little acquainted. _Zaccharia_, Vierzig Bücher, VI, 60.] [Footnote 229-2: The food of the French people has improved also in point of quantity. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, of cereals there were 472 liters per capita, at present there are 541 liters; and in addition, now, 240 liters of potatoes and vegetables more than then. Compare _Moreau de Joannès_, Statistique de l'Agriculture de la France, 1848, and the same writer's Statistique céréale de la France, in the Journal des Economistes, 1842, Janv. On the recent decrease or increase in the consumption of meat, see the very different estimates of _M. Chevalier_, Cours., I, 113 seq., and Journal des Economistes, Mars, 1856, 438 ff.] [Footnote 229-3: _Ch. Smith_, Tracts on the Corn Trade, 1758, 182. _Eden_, State of the Poor, I, 563, seq. In _McCulloch_, Statist, I, 316, 466 ff., 548. Moreover, _Rogers_ says that English workmen in the middle ages, for the most part, consumed wheat bread. (Statist. Journal, 1864, 73.) About the middle of the 13th century, only from 11 to 12 _malters_ of wheat were produced on the estates of the bishop of Osnabrück; about 470 of oats, 300 of rye, and 120 of barley. (_J. Möser_, Osnabrück, Gesch., Werke, VII, 2. 166.) Even beer was brewed from oats in the earlier part of the middle ages. (_Guérard_, Polyptiques, I, 710 ff.) The ancients, also, in their lower stages of civilization, lived on barley bread by way of preference, and went over to wheat only at a later period; compare _Plin._, H. N. XVIII, 14. _Heracl._, Pont, fr. 2. _Athen._, IV., 137, 141. _Plutarch_, Alcib., 23. As to how, in Rome, the transition from _far_ to the much more costly _triticum_, was connected with the extension of the hide of land from 2 to 7 _jugera_, see _M. Voigt_ in the Rhein. Museum f. Philol., 1868.]